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So I thought it was high time that I write in my blog. Originally it started out as a writing blog but as my photography skills got better my pictures kind of took over. And I am so grateful for all the positive response and new followers my pictures have brought me! But my talent has always been writing and so here we are.

Today is Easter Sunday and I consider myself a Catholic. But here I am blogging away but not in Church. I believe in God and the saints and the rituals of my religion but I have serious doubts about the politics of the Church. I have serious doubts about politics in any area in fact. But I have found it very hard to go back to Church even though I love so many things about it.

When I was growing up Church and Easter meant family. I remember going to Mass with my Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy and a gaggle of my cousins. Everyone lived closer to each other back then. We could take up three pews if we all tried to sit together, and we always did. I loved to hold hands with my family while we said the Our Father. I loved comparing our cute Easter dresses with Christy and Lauren and my Aunts. I loved standing side by side in the pews of the church with my family. I loved to pick out the voices of my Aunts as we all sang the different songs during Mass. My favorite songs were Church songs and I don’t know if it was the comfort I got knowing they were always the same ones and would always be the same ones, or if is was the words and melody that attracts me to every song I fall in love with. With Catholic Mass there is a great comfort in repetition, imagining I am saying the same prayers that had echoed through the Church for hundreds of years.

And then there was the family time after church. Whether it was an Easter egg hunt in the backyard or the pounds of ham devoured for brunch, I was with my family. At my other Grandparents house, my Great Grandma Adams always made these huge overstuffed Easter baskets and hide them around the house. I would wake up in the morning in my night gown and a knot of long curly hair on my head and groggily search the whole house. Ultimately to find an Easter basket taller then I was. And all the pictures I have of those times are some of my greatest treasures. Swarms of kids outside in their church clothes searching newly blooming flower beds for plastic eggs filled with goodies while being yelled at not to get dirty. Family pictures where my Dad and Tom have the same scowl on their faces partly from the Spring sun in their eyes and partly because they were forced into neckties. I remember trying eggs Benedict for the first time at my Aunt Jan’s house for one Easter. I love the feeling of a huge family stuffed into a slightly too small house and celebrating not only the holiday but simply being together.

But these days things have changed. Both my Grandpa and Grandma Kennedy have passed on and my Great Grandma Adams and my Uncle Joe and too many others. As the family has grown up, they have spread out too. I am lucky to get to see people from either side more than once a year. I know that all things change and the happiness they have found in growing up and having families of their own brings me so much joy. I thank God everyday for things like Facebook and cell phones because they keep us connected. But with Church it is harder to find the joy that used to be there. I still believe in God and living a good life. I say my Hail Marys often and ask for forgiveness when I feel I have done something wrong. But when I walk into Church, I can’t hear the beauty in the music anymore. I don’t feel the comfort in the prayers that I used to. And I hope the feeling won’t last forever, I honestly do. Until then I know God still hears me and that my Grandma Kennedy sends me signs to show me she is still watching over me and is my strongest Guardian Angel. And I will cherish the one or two times a years when I get to squish into a house a little too small for all of us.

So I do want to wish Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates whether religiously or bunny-centric or a little of both!

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This is a picture of the shrine of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin. Mom and I took a short trip to St. Mary-of-the-Woods near Terre Haute, Indiana last fall. The story of her life and her ties to Indiana was one of the most amazing things I have heard. The Sisters of Providence who live there keep the grounds in harmony with nature which I think only helps to make you feel closer to God. And I have to say that the little road trips that Mom and I take 2 or 3 times a year are always my favorites.